A Flash in the Darkness
"Fire!"
White smoke and flame burst from the muzzle, and the carriage lurched hard backward.
The gunners, waiting well clear of the piece, had been strung tight at first. Now they fell to the work with practiced hands.
"Close the vent!"
"Vent closed!"
The gunner repeated his captain's order and stopped the touchhole with a thumb in a thick leather glove.
"Sponge the bore!"
"Sponging the bore!"
The loader dipped the heavy fleece fixed to the butt of the rammer, shook the water off, and drove the staff into the smoking muzzle, gripping hard and twisting as he shoved. When it reached the chamber at the breech he bore down and wrenched it once more, killing whatever ember the last shot had left and scraping the fouling plastered inside the tube. He twisted the rammer again as he hauled it free. It came out with a clean hollow pop—the bore gone to vacuum, every spark inside snuffed dead.
"Reload!"
I watched them seat the powder bag and the shot, sure and unhurried.
The bombardment had been going for hours. So the guns would not cook off their charges, and so these precious bronze tubes would not warp or burst in the heat, the crews were firing by turns, each piece resting until it cooled. Delicate work: shoot, and wait, and shoot again.
Along the wall the timber defenses—the towers, the crossbow platforms—were wreckage, and even the crenellations of the parapet had scarcely a sound stretch left. The eastern face, beaten without mercy, was a ruin. Let a head show above the stone and the matchlockmen waiting below poured fire into it, so the cannonade went on in perfect safety, entirely one-sided.
Small shot, for a siege: a cast-iron round of nine geun, some twelve English pounds. Each time one of those spheres hammered the foot of the eastern wall, dust boiled up and shards of brick leapt. At barely fifty meters the harm was plain to the eye. Most of the rounds had walked into a tight group on the chosen stretch of the base. The brickwork was already caved well inward; shattered brick lay heaped with whole bricks that had simply dropped away where the lime between them failed. The rubble along the foot of the wall said the collapse was not far off.
"At this rate—three days? No. It comes down tomorrow."
"Most likely."
Liu Ji had come because he wanted to see it himself. He could not keep the wonder off his face as he watched the field guns cough thunder and smoke without cease.
"Even a Huihui trebuchet the size of a fortress would not throw with force such as this. Great as the might of powder is, how can it be so..."
"In truth, that nine-pounder has four times the power of a Huihui trebuchet. Five, even."
"Surely not so much as that? I have heard a Huihui trebuchet can hurl a stone of a hundred and fifty geun—ninety kilograms."
I gave him a wry smile at the disbelief in his look.
The pattern for our nine-pounder field gun was the European twelve-pounder, nine geun of iron being twelve English pounds, and by European reckoning that was the lightest and weakest caliber counted as a siege gun. Even so, the energy in its shot ran four or five times what lay in the hundred-kilogram stone flung by a house-sized counterweight trebuchet. The difference was speed, first of all—so great the ball all but vanished from the eye. That was why walls that had shrugged off catapult stones for centuries stopped holding once cannon came.
"And a stone from a trebuchet climbs high into the sky before it falls, does it not?"
"Indeed. It is so."
"So when it meets the wall at last, it comes in at a slant. The force bound up in that mass of rock is never given over whole."
A trebuchet throws on a high arc, hard to hit with, and even a hit spends its strength poorly. A cannonball flies near to flat, easy to lay on a wall, and when it strikes it comes in almost square, passing the shock through nearly entire.
"It helps that they built the wall of brick."
"But is a wall of brick not the stronger?"
"Had they raised it of great stones, shot would have labored to break it. Brick fired from clay shatters readily, and the lime that binds one brick to the next is weaker still."
Set aside massive granite ashlars. Even against the limestone Europeans favored for fortress work, soft enough to cut, brick cracked and crumbled far more easily. The bricks were small and stuck with lime, so when shot beat on them it was not only the brick that failed but the joints, the weakest point of all—sound bricks simply fell away, just as they were doing before our eyes. And unlike a trebuchet, whose strikes wandered over the face, we had come up almost to the foot of the wall and were hammering one chosen spot with something near the accuracy of a musket, over and over. Even a nine-pounder, no great siege gun, could do grievous harm to a wall this size.
The one regret was that, caliber for caliber, the tubes had been kept short and thin to save weight. They heated quickly, and they would not take a heavier charge.
"We'll keep the nine-pounder as the standard piece. But I ought to think about casting four heavy siege guns as well."
"How large do you mean to make them?"
"The barrel alone would have to run past four thousand geun. Two tons and more..."
I traded remarks with Liu Ji—as widely read in these odds and ends as my teacher Song Han-gi—and watched a bombardment that was going entirely to plan.
That hateful whistle again. Then the crash, and a shock that shivered up through the soles of their feet.
Men crouched under the merlons swallowed hard, eyes trembling. How long—how long would it go on? Better a clean fight. But the Duke of Yue's army only repeated that miserable cannonade, with no sign at all of coming on to take the wall.
"If this keeps up... the wall's going to fall, isn't it?"
"Don't talk like that!"
Sayf al-Din ground his teeth at the muttering of the Persian soldiers. Few men were left up on the wall. Staying there gained nothing; they could not even loose crossbow or bow. To keep his strength, and to keep their nerve from rotting in that dreadful thunder and the dread that came with it, he had sent most of them down inside to wait. The terror in the eyes of those who remained told him the choice had been wise.
"Naib, if we go on like this..."
"I know. Be quiet!"
At the uneasy voices of his officers he bulged his eyes and snarled. Shot slamming into the foot of the wall, dust, the shudder in the stone—fear had held them for a long while now.
Their damned midfa. He had sent men to put their heads over the parapet and look down, taking the fire of those handguns as the price. Several were shot dead. The one who barely lived to report said the brick at the base was badly broken, the rubble piled like a hill.
"They aren't hurrying. They've powder to spare, that's plain... By tomorrow, most likely..."
Sayf al-Din shut his eyes tight and sank into thought. Hundreds of Persian elite had already died on the wall today. Every man of them had seen, clear as day, the terrible cannon the Duke of Yue's army brought to bear, and the handguns that punched through armor shot after shot. If the eastern wall fell and they came in through the breach—
"The Muslims we can still trust. But the unbelievers are ten thousand. The moment they decide it pays better to change their flags, it's finished, Naib!"
"Yes. If the wall comes down, the odds are high they turn on us."
But there was no other way. The Duke of Yue's army moved like the teeth of a gear. They did not grow hot. They did not grow angry. They were not afraid. Step by step they only drew the noose a little tighter, and they showed no gap.
"Why not open the gate and go out? The numbers aren't so different. Better that than sitting here and being beaten on."
"Fool's talk! We have a wall. Why would we—"
"Can't you see the wall's about to fall to pieces?"
Sayf al-Din glared at his squabbling officers, sighed, and looked up at the sky.
"Wait. The guns. The guns have stopped."
"Ah... now that you say it..."
That hateful whistle cutting the wind had stopped as well. The endless crash, the fearful shudder in the stone—somewhere in the last moments, they had ceased.
He crept to the broken parapet and eased only his eyes above it.
"They're going back to camp! Back to camp!"
At his shout the others rose and studied the enemy. The foe was retiring in good order, ranks dressed, and every man let out a breath.
"Thank God. At least until tomorrow..."
"Thank God for what? You think tomorrow will be any different?"
He cut the thoughtless officer short and watched the sky darken by degrees. The sun had already slid west; the red-stained heaven was slowly going black. Dark night was coming.
"Yes. Night. It's night."
He cried it all at once and turned.
"Go on like this and the wall falls whenever they please! Better to settle it tonight than sit here fretting that our own men will knife us in the back!"
"A night attack, you mean?"
"Fight them by day and those dreadful cannon and handguns will do their work. But strike them in the dark, when they think the thing already won and have let their guard down? They won't even get to use those weapons."
The others nodded. Their fleet was gone; the road home to Quanzhou, their base, was cut. And now cannon of terrifying power stood on the verge of bringing the wall down. Was this not the hour to stake their last hope and fight to the death?
"As we are, our fate is plain! Every one of us loses his head, or is dragged off a slave of the unbelievers!"
Sayf al-Din raked the captains of the Ispah host with burning eyes.
"Warriors who follow Imam Ali! Warriors who follow Imam Husayn! Do you want to live as slaves of the unbelievers? Will you stomach that shame?"
"No! Naib!"
"We'll fight! We'll fight, and die!"
He drew his sword.
"Remember the last night of Karbala! The seventy-two warriors who died at Imam Husayn's side!"
"May God be pleased with them!"
"Tonight we open the gate and go out! Set your hearts alight with rage! Let the unbelievers learn that Ali's warriors are here!"
"Death to the unbelievers! Victory—or nothing but martyrdom!"
"God is great!"
"God is great!"
The Persian warriors, sunk until then in fear, drew their keen shamshirs and shouted. Sayf al-Din looked on his men with their spirit restored, then glared at the enemy camp beyond the wall, gone dim in the dark. Overhead, an ill-omened sliver of moon was rising.
"Division Commander. Division Commander."
In the pitch-black shadow a man leaned against an earthen wall, eyes shut. Dolswe opened them at the whisper and the hand shaking his shoulder. The officer who had woken him spoke low.
"The enemy has left the gate. They are closing on us quickly."
Dolswe rose and, without hurry, drew tight the loosened chin strap of his helmet. Men who had been sleeping by turns woke without a sound under their comrades' hands. In the thin moonlight of the camp, the soldiers of the Tiger Hunting Army lying in the outer redoubt moved to their places with calm faces.
"They came out by the postern on the north. They are swinging wide across the northern fields, coming in slow."
Dolswe nodded at the report the sentries brought back. He was the one who had insisted a night attack was likely, and he had taken for himself the ambush on the northern approach, where the enemy was most apt to come. Behind the redoubt's earth wall more than ten nine-pounder field guns lay hidden, and naval gunners crouched with the Tiger Hunting Army, staring into the dark fields and scarcely breathing.
Years had passed since they ranged the mountains and forests of Wenzhou, putting bandits down. The First Division of the Tiger Hunting Army, and its commander Dolswe, were long seasoned in fights against men who struck after dark—and above all in night attacks aimed at a camp. Cornered men all thought the same thoughts.
The matchlockmen waited with fire-strikers in hand, unwilling to light their matches lest a glow or a smell give them away. Dolswe ran his eye over them and spoke to a naval officer.
"Is the preparation complete?"
"Loaded, sir. Each gun has its sector."
"You will fire on my order."
He gave the naval gunners attached to him their orders, then narrowed his eyes on the dark northern fields beyond the earth wall and the palisade.
Early summer was coming on. In the warm land of Fujian this was the season for cutting the early rice sown in spring, then rushing the summer transplant so a second crop could be set. But the sudden war had left the fields unwatered, and they lay dry. Under the feeble light of the late moon, far off, shadows came low across the paddy ridges. A thin smile crooked Dolswe's mouth, and he made no sound. The moon was not bright, yet armor flashed, spearheads and blades caught what light there was, and pale faces showed; they were visible even from a distance. A night attack straight across open fields like these. Too clumsy by half.
He watched, expressionless, as the shadows multiplied—dozens, hundreds, thousands. Beside him a boy held a conch, face tight with nerves, waiting for the word. Then, all at once, thousands of the enemy were crowding into the ground Dolswe had marked.
"Blow the conch."
At the order the boy set the shell to his lips and blew as if his chest would burst. The low, heavy note broke the silence of the dark and rolled out in every direction.
All around, fire-strikers snapped sparks onto matchcord. Torches flared along the earth wall. Officers nocked oil-soaked arrows, drew hard, and let fly. Dozens of fire arrows crossed the night and fell into the fields. In the light of the camp's torches and the burning shafts, thousands of enemy soldiers who had been creeping forward bent double were suddenly bare to the eye. They wavered an instant, then came on screaming.
They roared cries no one on the wall could understand, swords out and swinging, and charged in a fury. In that instant Dolswe shouted until his throat tore.
"Fire!"
A blinding flash, and white smoke vomiting out with it. Canister from ten guns—some three hundred iron balls the size of walnuts—scythed the field all at once.
"Aaaaagh!"
"Ghk—"
Hundreds who had run in almost to the muzzles blew blood and went down. Behind the cannon, the matchlockmen, cords lit, opened fire.
"Reload! Canister!"
"Reloading! Canister!"
The gunners shouted the order back and moved in a rush. The matchlockmen tore their paper cartridges with their teeth and poured powder down the muzzles. The enemy still came on in a tide, screaming, not yet willing to break.
Dolswe turned a savage smile on the men who would not give up.
"Kill them. Kill every last one of them!"
Thunder and flash lit the night sky white.